1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for determing the properties of metals an apparatus which measures the internal friction behavior of an alloy during its phase transformation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The measuring techniques of internal friction that have been developed in the past few decades, i.e. the torsion pendulum method, the transverse vibration method and others for measuring internal friction behavior of metals, provide significant contributions to the study of metals. The techniques of measuring internal friction are used to measure the situations of solid solutions in a metal alloy, such as the solute content of nitrogen and/or of carbon in steel, the distribution and diffusion of some elements in an alloy, and other defects in a metal, etc. Therefore, due to the fact that those new techniques provide meaningful measured results of the inside situation of metals, persons in the art can now understand metals much better than before.
Although internal friction measuring has been widely applied in the study of metals, the measuring condition needs to be improved in at least two aspects. Firstly, during a heat-treatment, such as quenching, tempering, and annealing, metals are treated at several different temperatures which cause the structural change, but the internal friction measuring of the metal specimens has only been conducted after the whole heat treatment procedure has been completed. That is to say, for example, the known skills can't measure the internal friction behavior of the incubation period of a over cooled austenite of the transformations during the heat treatment, but only provides the measured data of heat treated specimens whose phase is in a steady and/or final state. Secondly, due to the limitation of experimental equipment, the known skills can not be performed at high temperatures, such as 750.degree. C. to 1100.degree. C. At these high temperatures known equipment can not measure the in-situ internal friction behavior of a metal specimen during the heat treatment procedure.